April 07, 2021
On Tuesday, the Napa County Board of Supervisors unanimously endorsed a proposal to reduce fuel – and fire risks in a county where deadly wildfires have destroyed houses, wineries and other properties.
The Napa Communities Firewise Foundation, a volunteer organization whose members include firefighters, vintners and other business leaders, commissioned the 18-month study that used remote sensing technology called Lidar to predict fire behavior given the county’s fuel conditions.
The document, known as the Napa County Community Wildfire Protection Plan, has led to the development of a 5-year vegetation management plan, including the construction and maintenance of fuel breaks. It is a tool the county can use to apply for state and federal funding.
At the time, Napa County Fire Chief Geoff Belyea remembers he believed there would never be another fire season like 2008.
But he thought the same after the Valley Fire in 2015, and again amid the Atlas and Tubbs fires in 2017. Asked if he now believed Napa County would see increasingly severe fire seasons going forward, Belyea paused.
âI donât know if you can say that we have seen the worst, but I donât know if you can say the worst is yet to come,â he said.
Itâs hard to speak in certain terms about what future fire seasons might bring for Napa County and the North Bay. What is for certain, experts say, is that warmer and drier conditions across California are giving way to wildfires more frequent, chaotic and destructive than ever before.